Best Food Writing 2012 Read online

  More Praise for the Best Food Writing Series

  “This is a book worth devouring.”—Sacramento Bee

  “The cream of the crop of food writing compilations.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

  “An exceptional collection worth revisiting, this will be a surefire hit with epicureans and cooks.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “If you’re looking to find new authors and voices about food, there’s an abundance to chew on here.”—Tampa Tribune

  “Fascinating to read now, this book will also be interesting to pick up a year from now, or ten years from now.”—Popmatters.com

  “Some of these stories can make you burn with a need to taste what they’re writing about.”—Los Angeles Times

  “The book captures the gastronomic zeitgeist in a broad range of essays.”—San Jose Mercury News

  “The next best thing to eating there is.”—New York Metro

  “Stories for connoisseurs, celebrations of the specialized, the odd, or simply the excellent.”—Entertainment Weekly

  “Spans the globe and palate.”—Houston Chronicle

  “The perfect gift for the literate food lover.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

  “With this typically delectable and eclectic collection of culinary prose, editor Holly Hughes proves her point made in the intro that the death of 68-year-old Gourmet magazine a year ago didn’t lead to the demise of quality food journalism . . . There’s a mess of vital, provocative, funny and tender stuff . . . in these pages.”—USA Today

  ALSO EDITED BY HOLLY HUGHES

  Best Food Writing 2011

  Best Food Writing 2010

  Best Food Writing 2009

  Best Food Writing 2008

  Best Food Writing 2007

  Best Food Writing 2006

  Best Food Writing 2005

  Best Food Writing 2004

  Best Food Writing 2003

  Best Food Writing 2002

  Best Food Writing 2001

  Best Food Writing 2000

  ALSO BY HOLLY HUGHES

  Frommer’s 500 Places for Food and Wine Lovers

  Frommer’s 500 Places to See Before They Disappear

  Frommer’s 500 Places to Take the Kids

  Before They Grow Up

  Edited by

  HOLLY HUGHES

  A Member of the

  Perseus Books Group

  Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book and Da Capo Press was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in initial capital letters.

  Copyright © 2012 by Holly Hughes

  Pages 380–384 constitute an extension of the copyright page.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information, address Da Capo Press, 44 Farnsworth Street, Third Floor, Boston, MA 02210.

  Set in 11 point Bembo by the Perseus Books Group

  Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

  First Da Capo Press edition 2012

  ISBN 978-0-7382-1619-5

  Published by Da Capo Press

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

  www.dacapopress.com

  Da Capo Press books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 255-1514, or e-mail [email protected].

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  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  By Holly Hughes

  FOOD FIGHTS

  On Killing, From HunterAnglerGardenerCook.com

  By Hank Shaw

  The Gumbo Chronicles, From Outside

  By Rowan Jacobsen

  Serving Up Sustainability, From Edible Boston

  By Erin Byers Murray

  Kids Battle the Lure of Junk Food,

  From Pacific Northwest Magazine

  By Maureen O’Hagan

  Pastoral Romance, From Lapham’s Quarterly

  By Brent Cunningham

  FARM TO TABLE

  Sweet Spot, From Alimentum

  By Paul Graham

  Snowville Creamery Has a Modest Goal: Save the World,

  From Edible Columbus

  By Eric LeMay

  Matters of Taste, From Tomatoland

  By Barry Estabrook

  Olives and Lives, From Extra Virginity

  By Tom Mueller

  This Little Piggy Went to Market, From Memoir Journal

  By Laura R. Zandstra

  HOME COOKING

  How to Live Well, From An Everlasting Meal

  By Tamar Adler

  Still Life with Mayonnaise, From At the Kitchen Table

  By Greg Atkinson

  The Fried Chicken Evangelist, From Leite’s Culinaria

  By Lorraine Eaton

  Lasagna Bolognese, From SmittenKitchen.com

  By Deb Perelman

  The Forager at Rest, From Bon Appetit

  By Christine Muhlke

  Better Cooking Through Technology, From Technology Review

  By Corby Kummer

  FOODWAYS

  The Pastrami Dilemma, From Chow.com

  By John Birdsall

  Passover Goes Gourmet, From Sunset

  By Rachel Levin

  The 2011 Dyke March Wiener Taste Test, From The Stranger

  By Bethany Jean Clement

  The Missing Link, From The Times-Picayune

  By Brett Anderson

  Foraging and Fishing Through the Big Bend, From Desert Terroir

  By Gary Paul Nabhan

  Italian America, From Saveur

  By John Mariani

  What Makes Sushi Great?, From GiltTaste.com

  By Francis Lam

  Food for Thought, From the New York Times

  By Jeff Gordinier

  DUDE FOOD

  Learning to Barbecue Helped Make Me a Man,

  From Food & Wine

  By Joel Stein

  Memphis in May: Pork-a-Looza, From Garden & Gun

  By Wright Thompson

  Truffle in Paradise, From Gastronomica

  By John Gutekanst

  A Slice of Family History, From Food & Wine

  By Daniel Duane

  Barbecue Road Trip: The Smoke Road, From Garden & Gun

  By John T. Edge

  THE FAMILY TABLE

  The Food-Critic Father, From The Washingtonian

  By Todd Kliman

  The Legacy That Wasn’t: Wonton Soup,

  From A Spoonful of Promises

  By T. Susan Chang

  Curious Cookies, From Edible Vancouver

  By Eagranie Yuh

  Chicken Brick, From Fire & Knives

  By Henrietta Clancy

  Angry Breakfast Eggs, From Poor Man’s Feast.com

  By Elissa Altman

  Sweet Southern Dream, From Saveur

  By Ben Mims

  SOMEONE’S IN THE KITCHEN

  The King of Pop-Up, From GQ

  By Brett Martin

  Hot Plate, From Minnesota Monthly

  By Rachel Hutton

  Austria’s Culinary Ambassador, From Edible Manhattan

  By St. John Frizell

  Remembering Savoy, From Edible Manhattan

  By Rachel Wharton

  Appetit
e for Perfection, From Los Angeles Magazine

  By Ed Leibowitz

  Supper Clubs in Denver, From the Denver Post

  By John Broening

  Why Chefs Sell Out, From Chow.com

  By Richie Nakano

  A Chef’s Painful Road to Rehab, From the Chicago Tribune

  By Kevin Pang

  Bitter Start to a Life of Sweets, From Sacramento Bee

  By Chris Macias

  PERSONAL TASTES

  Kitchen Confessional: Burnin’ Down Da House, From Leites Culinaria

  By David Leite

  Do I Dare to Eat a Peach?, From Texas Monthly

  By John Spong

  A Proposal for Feeding the Fat and Anxious,

  From Gastronomica

  By Josh Ozersky

  The Bone Gatherer, From Saveur

  By Mei Chin

  They Don’t Have Tacos in the Suck, From Houston Press

  By Katharine Shilcutt

  I Won’t Have the Stomach for This, From the New York Times

  By Anna Stoessinger

  Recipe Index

  Permissions Acknowledgments

  About the Editor

  INTRODUCTION

  By Holly Hughes

  I’m easily mesmerized when it comes to food shopping—inhaling the yeasty scent of the bakery, gently plucking ripe items from the produce bins, shivering in the frosty air of the freezer section. But lately it seems that all I do in the grocery aisle is pore over package labels. Yes, I’m following Michael Pollan’s sage advice in Food Rules (no food products with more than five ingredients, no ingredients you can’t pronounce, nothing your great-grandmother wouldn’t have recognized—you know the drill). But I have two other compelling reasons to vet the foods I feed my family.

  Our kitchen now must be totally nut-free, after my college-age son went into anaphylactic shock from a dinner of Thai shrimp and cashews. A game-changer? Absolutely. So now I scrutinize the fine print on every package of food that enters our home. Even when the ingredient list doesn’t include nuts, there’s the dreaded caveat: manufactured in a facility that also processes tree nuts. Maybe it’s a slim chance of cross-contamination, but I can’t take that risk—put the Le Petit Ecolier cookies back on the shelf and choose Choco Leibnitz instead.

  We’d just gotten used to that New Normal when my younger daughter threw another wrench in the works: She’s decided to go vegan three days a week, filling our refrigerator with tubs of tempeh, seitan, and Tofurkey. Usually I’m wary of any dietary regimen that’s so exclusionary, but I’m going along with this one, because A) this too shall pass, and B) until it passes, she’s been inspired to try all sorts of healthy foods she wouldn’t touch before. It’s actually expanding her culinary horizons instead of narrowing them, and I’m all in favor of that. But now I have to apply a second filter when I read food labels. And lo and behold, what’s the main source of protein in many vegan products? You guessed it, nuts. So my kitchen has become a bit of a battleground.

  Sound familiar? When it comes to food, our entire society seems to be a battleground these days. Americans were once known as a nation of slapdash, thoughtless eaters; now it almost seems we think about nothing else. On the one hand, we obsess over food as entertainment, fetishizing “decadent” desserts and all-you-can-eat buffets and trophy high-end dining. On the other, we relentlessly worry about nutrition, health, and the environmental impact of what we eat. People feel so invested in their dietary choices that the age-old concept of sharing a common meal—breaking bread together, even if it’s gluten-free—gets short shrift. It’s almost impossible to throw a dinner party these days without negotiating a minefield of various guests’ food demands.

  Enter food writers, who every year become more and more indispensable as guides to this shifting gastronomic landscape. Since editing the first edition of Best Food Writing in the year 2000, I’ve witnessed an explosion in the number of magazines, websites, newsletters, and TV shows devoted to food; the shelves of my local culinary bookshop (New York City’s esteemed Kitchen Arts & Letters) are crammed with expensively produced cookbooks, best-selling culinary memoirs, and scholarly works on all aspects of food. It’s been a thrilling metamorphosis to observe firsthand.

  In those years, I’ve watched food stories move from the “women’s pages” of newspapers onto the front pages and op-ed pages. Check out the issue-oriented pieces in the opening section, Food Fights—stories like Rowan Jacobsen’s venture into post-oil-spill Louisiana fishing waters (page 7), Brent Cunningham’s questioning of farm-to-table as a cure-all for America’s food supply (page 36), and Hank Shaw’s defense of hunting (page 2). And here’s another sign of the times: Many of this year’s writers earned their stars as bloggers (Elissa Altman of PoorMansFeast, page 246; Smitten Kitchen’s Deb Perelman, page 103; Katharine Shilcutt of EatingOurWords and SheEats, page 364), a source of food writing that was barely on anyone’s radar thirteen years ago.

  In a food-obsessed culture, trend-spotting is always risky. Nevertheless, when you spend months combing through bookstores and magazines and websites, as I do, every year certain themes pop out. I think of 2012 as the Year of the Three F’s: fermentation, foraging, and fennel. What inspired the fermentation craze is anybody’s guess, but it’s a fair bet that foraging rose to the forefront thanks to Rene Redzepi’s Copenhagen restaurant Noma (see Christine Muhlke’s profile on page 111). The fennel? It may just be me, but ever since reading Tamar Adler’s How to Live Well (page 82), I’ve noticed roast fennel and shaved raw fennel on menus everywhere.

  2012 also produced a bumper crop of pieces concerned with cooking as a Guy Thing. Hence our whole new section on Dude Food, congregating a tailgate party’s worth of male food writers, no less than two of whom—Joel Stein (page 180) and Daniel Duane (page 204)—have recently written entire books on the subject of Manliness.

  Always looking for new frontiers, Americans have recently developed an avid curiosity about diverse food cultures. Our Foodways section examines a wide spectrum of those, from sushi (Francis Lam, page 169) to Passover seders (Rachel Levin, page 133) to red-sauce Italian-American (John Mariani, page 162). And because chefs are the new rock stars, Someone’s in the Kitchen profiles all sorts of chefs—from Kevin Pang’s cautionary tale of a chef on the skids (page 320) to Chris Macias’ inspiring profile of one redeemed (page 327).

  Some pieces in this year’s Best Food Writing feature the very newest developments, such as pop-up restaurants (Richie Nakano, page 317, and Brett Martin, page 258) and the high-tech wonders of Modernist Cuisine (Corby Kummer’s review, page 117). But the Old always has a place alongside the New: witness Paul Graham’s lyrical essay on syrup making (page 48), Jeff Gordinier’s look at eating as an act of meditation (page 173), or Mei Chin’s musings on broth and bones (page 359).

  Speaking of balancing the Old with the New, this year’s book features a number of writers who have graced these pages often: Deans of the food writing world such as Southern food champion John T. Edge (page 208), political watchdog Barry Estabrook (page 62), locavore crusader Gary Paul Nabhan (page 149), the always witty David Leite (page 336), philosopher of home cooking Greg Atkinson (page 92), and the man whose food writing helped save New Orleans, Brett Anderson (page 140). But the robust state of food writing ensures that there are always new personalities bursting onto the scene—writers such as Vancouver chocolatier Eagranie Yuh (page 237), San Francisco’s John Birdsall (page 128), New England’s T. Susan Chang (page 230), Londoner Henrietta Clancy (page 241), and transplanted Southerner and sweetaholic Ben Mims (page 250).

  So while fretting over package labels has become a necessity for me, I gratefully turn to food writing to remind me that food should also be a pleasure. Instead of limiting their options, I’ve found ways to help my kids expand their food choices—teaching my son to make a stir-fry that’s better than risky takeout, surprising my daughter with a savory lentil salad full of diced raw veggies. Here’s hoping that this year’s Best Food Writing
will help you too navigate the gastronomic landscape with zest and an open mind. The food scene doesn’t have to be a battleground, after all—there’s room enough for all of us at the table.

  Food Fights

  ON KILLING

  By Hank Shaw

  From HunterAnglerGardenerCook.com

  Foraging and fishing have gained hipster cachet recently, but hunters still are often shunned by politically correct foodies. Hank Shaw—former line cook and commercial fisherman, and author of Hunt, Gather, Cook—demands equal respect for those food lovers who slay their meat.

  I have been dealing a lot of death lately. I’ve hunted five of the past eight days and have killed birds on each trip. My larder is filling, and Holly and I are eating well. Lots of duck, some pheasant and even a little of the venison I have left over from the 2010 season. That is the good side of all this, the side of hunting that most people can embrace. I hunt for a lot of reasons, but for me the endgame is always the table.

  It is the journey to that table that can sometimes give people pause. What I do to put meat in my freezer is alien to most, anathema to some. In the past seven years, I can count on one hand the times I’ve had to buy meat for the home. This fact alone makes me an outlier, an anomaly. And that I am unashamed—proud, really—of this seems to cause a lot of folks I meet to look at me funny: I am a killer in their midst.

  Not too long ago, I was at a book signing event for Hunt, Gather, Cook when a young woman approached me. She was very excited about foraging, and she had loved that section of my book. Then her face darkened. She told me she’d also read my section on hunting. “How can you enjoy killing so much? I just don’t understand it. You seem like such a nice person, too.” It took a few minutes for me to explain myself to her, and I am grateful that she listened. She left, I think, with a different opinion.

  A few weeks later, I was at the University of Oregon talking about wild food to some students. When I mentioned hunting, I could feel the temperature in the room drop. It occurred to me that no one there was a hunter, nor were they close to any hunters. I called for a show of hands. One guy raised his. I asked him briefly about his hunting experience, and it was obvious that it had been traumatic for the poor kid. I let the topic slide and moved on to mushrooms.